Author Topic: Fran Drescher talks being Happily Divorced from gay ex-husband, for real & on TV  (Read 3273 times)

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/fran-drescher-talks-being-happily-divorced-from-gay-ex-husband/2011/06/14/AGJ4lhUH_blog.html?wprss=celebritology





Fran Drescher talks being
‘Happily Divorced’
from gay ex-husband

By Sarah Anne Hughes
Posted at 12:23 PM ET, 06/14/2011



Fran Drescher and her distinct voice are returning to television in a new role that may surprise viewers who know her only as “The Nanny” named Fran.

Drescher stars in “Happily Divorced,” a new TV Land comedy she created based on her real life relationship with ex Peter Jacobson, who revealed he was gay after they ended their 20 year marriage in 1999. The actress told George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday’s “Good Morning America” that, like her character, she wondered, “How did I not know?”

“The metrosexual was really coming into vogue, so I thought that was it,” Drescher joked, as her signature laugh rang out.

On the show, Drescher’s character and her ex, played by John Michael Higgins, can’t sell their house because of the economy and are forced to live together. While this plot may seem pretty unrelatable to most, Drescher, who opened up about her battle with uterine cancer in the book “Cancer Schmancer,” said “the global message of this show is ‘Love is love.’”

“Just as Peter and I have, the characters are learning how to reinvent their relationship and their friendship into something else that accommodates their life now,” she said.

“Happily Divorced” premieres Wednesday on TV Land.


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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/fran-drescher-talks-being-happily-divorced-from-gay-ex-husband/2011/06/14/AGJ4lhUH_blog.html?wprss=celebritology
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
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Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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http://tv.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/television/fran-drescher-in-happily-divorced-on-tv-land-review.html




Television Review
Happily Divorced

Life With a Gay Ex-Husband. It Happens.
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: June 14, 2011




Happily Divorced John Michael Higgins and Fran Drescher in the premiere of this TV Land series
on Wednesday.



Not so long ago there was nothing funny about a wife discovering that her husband is gay.

The 2002 movie “Far From Heaven” steeped the subject in Douglas Sirk-like melodrama. And in 1982, “Making Love,” a deadly serious movie about a husband who is secretly attracted to a man, was considered shocking.

It’s actually not that big a deal, at least in the eyes of Fran Drescher. “Happily Divorced,” her sitcom that begins on Wednesday on TV Land, is about a woman named Fran who is not fazed by her husband’s revelation and continues to live with him even after they split.

“I blow the leaves — he blows my hair,” Fran says in her trademark nasal bray. “It’s like we are still married.”

Ms. Drescher knows what she is talking about. As with so much of her previous work, including the hit CBS series “The Nanny,” there is a strong autobiographical streak to “Happily Divorced.” She was married for many years to Peter Marc Jacobson, who produced and, with Ms. Drescher, created “The Nanny,” and who told her after their divorce that he was gay. The two evidently remain close, since he is an executive producer of this latest series; the gay husband, played by John Michael Higgins, is named Peter. “Happily Divorced” is less a sitcom than a showcase for Ms. Drescher’s delightful, if somewhat time-worn, brand of schtick.

It’s natural that she would find a home on TV Land. The cable network that got its start showing reruns of classic sitcoms is rapidly becoming the television equivalent of the Yankees Fantasy Camp or Bloomberg News — a place that puts onetime greats back to work.

“Hot in Cleveland” on TV Land stars Jane Leeves (“Frasier”), Wendie Malick (“Just Shoot Me”), Valerie Bertinelli (“One Day at a Time”) and Betty White (practically everything) and begins its second season on Wednesday before “Happily Divorced.” It’s a sitcom about three middle-aged women who move to Cleveland in search of normal (i.e., not too exacting) men, and it is quite funny. Mostly that’s because the actresses are so appealing, but also because the writing is imaginative and a little dark — the comedy is etched in the single woman’s battle with loneliness.

Ms. Drescher’s comedy, on the other hand, is so light that it’s like a vaudeville routine. In the first scene Peter wakes up Fran in bed and blurts out that he is gay.

“But we just had sex during Leno,” Fran retorts. “How gay can you be?”

She whines a bit, then moves on with her life, which includes meeting a dashingly handsome and doting man on her first foray as a newly single woman. Her biggest problem, it turns out, is that her gay ex-husband is jealous of her new beau (D. W. Moffett), and vice versa.

Ms. Drescher wears a small, knowing smile that serves as a wink to the audience as she glides through scenes without affect or traction — almost as if standing on a wheeled platform like the Rose Parade queen. She isn’t acting, she is being Fran, which is to say, sitcom Fran.

Ms. Drescher has written two memoirs and in both is candid about her troubled life. In 1985 she was raped at gunpoint by an intruder while her husband was tied up and forced to watch; in 2000 she learned she had uterine cancer, a struggle that she won and that inspired her to found a nonprofit organization, the Cancer Schmancer Movement.

For perhaps understandable reasons, her on-screen life is as cheery, smooth and easy as her real experience was not. That also means that there isn’t much bite to it.

The same was true of an earlier sitcom, “Living With Fran,” on WB, in which she played a single mother dating a much younger man — one who is not just handsome but also thoughtful and witty. Her children are shocked at first, but they quickly come around: it’s as if Ms. Drescher could not tolerate conflict, even for comic effect.

And that is a drawback for “Happily Divorced.” Ms. Drescher stars in a comedy about marital discord that airbrushes out all traces of pain, sadness or anger. Divorce can be funny, but unmitigated happiness is often a bore.

HAPPILY DIVORCED

TV Land, Wednesday nights at 10:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 9:30, Central time.

Produced by Hudson Street Productions. Created by Fran Drescher and Peter Marc Jacobson; Ms. Drescher, Mr. Jacobson and Franco E. Bario, executive producers; Larry W. Jones and Keith Cox, executive producers for TV Land.

WITH: Fran Drescher (Fran), John Michael Higgins (Peter), Tichina Arnold (Judi), Rita Moreno (Dori), Robert Walden (Glen), Valente Rodriguez (Cesar) and D. W. Moffett (Elliot).
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Front-Ranger

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I'll have to look for this on Wednesdays, it could be fun.

Having a gay husband? Could be worse...could be raining!  8)
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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I'll have to look for this on Wednesdays, it could be fun.

I should try to see Hot in Cleveland, too.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Luvlylittlewing

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I should try to see Hot in Cleveland, too.

I've seen a few episodes.  I make a point to watch it if I can remember when it airs.